Teutonia Peak/Cima Dome Trail GPS Hiking trails

GPS Routes & Data for Teutonia Peak/Cima Dome Trail

A short but steep round-trip on one of only two maintained trails in the Mojave National Preserve, within the Wilderness boundary, to a rocky point surrounded by an extensive Joshua tree forest. Don ’t attempt the difficult summit unless you are an experienced rock climber. Instead, spend some time exploring the endless nooks and pockets surrounding the peak. Teutonia Peak is actually an extensive complex of granite outcroppings, boulders and huge mounds of monzonite. Walk out on the fairly level ridge to the east to gain an excellent overall perspective of the peak complex and much of the preserve to the north and east. Stunted Joshua trees mix with juniper all the way to this lofty 5,640-foot level. The end-of-the-trail notch provides a magnificent view westward of Cima Dome, which gradually rises 1,500 feet above the surrounding desert to an elevation almost equal to that of Teutonia Peak. The dome is a huge 75-square-mile symmetrical hump of monzonite formed when a core of molten rock cooled and hardened deep beneath the surface of the earth. It has since been uncovered by millions of years of erosion resulting in the unusual landscape we see today. Cima Dome is adorned by one of the largest Joshua tree forests in the vast California desert. These trees are a different, more spindly variety than those found to the south in Joshua Tree National Park.